I remembered a lot from my EE degree that I completed 23 years ago. I ran circles around my daughter when she took AP chemistry, AP physics and calculus in high school. I noticed that I have forgotten the information from my elective and more advanced courses. Ask me in another 10 years and my answer will be dramatically different. I believe you will find that you are more likely to remember the courses that played a formidable role in your development in college. Calculus, physics and chemistry essentially changed who I was into the person I am today.
I think this video–Father Guido Sarducci’s ‘Five Minute University’–is applicable here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4
In 5 minutes, you learn what the average college graduate remembers 5 years out of school.
@outlooker You’re assuming he learned it despite his current claims he didn’t? In most cases this would put the mechanism (i.e. the college and degree granting) in question. Maybe he never should have been awarded it in the first place. I see employees who clearly have a degree, but you are still left wondering what they learned.
Good GPA doesnt mean anything. My husband was taught well in Physics, he really understood and can still help my daughter with Physics, but it takes time to refresh our memories. But he noticed many Asian parents who we came in conversation about pipes and pressure(regarding yard work) may did well in college but didn’t understand it. There is a part of physics that you just get the math right and get good grades but not completely understood it. I’m good with math and was tutored by my brother who was #6 in my country and I could still help out in Calculus. Some high school kids that my daughter said were really good in math, I found them lacking the rigor of understanding. Yet some of them were tops in the math class.
You remember what you practice.
I’ve been a synthetic organic chemist for much of the past 30 years, and I’ve remembered most of my undergrad/grad training in reaction mechanisms, retrosynthetic analysis, and functional group manipulation. Lately I’ve been tutoring high school students and teaching at community colleges, where I’ve realized that I did forget some stuff from general chemistry (Hess’s Law?) However, it only took me about twenty or thirty minutes to relearn it.
If you don’t use it, you lose it. Like my Spanish vocabulary.
One of the things I learned in college 35 years ago was that we only retain 5% of what we learn in college. Sadly, this fact is part of my 5%.
I remember a lot of what I learned in HS, which I use a lot – algebra, geometry, English language, writing. In college, I learned to be relatively fluent in French – which I know would come back with a week or two of immersion – and not much else. College was kind of a wasteland for me, both academically and socially.
@JustOneDad He did learn it, he just forgot everything in the past 23 years.
Why to even try to remember. Few facts are needed to be memorized for certain future, like Medical School material, but even Medical School does not require to memorize the college material past taking MCAT.
We have Google for any information. I find very technical detailed material on Google, the things that nobody would remember in my office…because, why we should junk up oour brain with the things that could be looked up. College is developing further one’s analytical skills, the skills required to quickly “figure out”, using logical connections in your brain, and, as an input, some information that you may find using Google.
This type of skill enabled us to help our D. with HS math and college physics. Nope, do not need to remember anything, Yes, give me the problem, I will find the material for this problem in your own textbook or even on internet. I done it many times…and easily. Why was it easy? Maybe because my brain is not holding whole slue of facts that I do not need to use, maybe because I have fresh brain to deal with the current problem. My job require no memory whatsoever, I love it.
I had a double major, English and Political Science. I worked for several years after graduation at a museum, a national park, and a newspaper. But once I had children, I never went back to full-time work. Some people may say that I stopped “using my degree.” That’s absolutely not so! My four years at college taught me how to search out information, evaluate my sources, draw a conclusion, and defend that conclusion. When I started to think that homeschooling might be a better choice for my kids than school, I knew exactly how to do the research to make the decision. When questions came up about things I didn’t know, I knew how to find the answers. I was confident about what I was doing, thanks to my college education. I can no longer discuss the theories of Hobbes and Locke or remember the plots of all of Shakespeare’s plays, but I do still possess and USE the skills I learned in college.
@outlooker, I think you’re making some unwarranted assumptions about what it means to “learn” something. Yes, I took calculus back in the day (twenty-mumble years ago), and I don’t remember how to do derivations or integrate formulae—but I know enough to know how to look it up easily. I wouldn’t be able to pass a college or even high school exam in calculus, certainly, but I know some of the basic underlying concepts—so, for example, I know the relationship between formulae and their derivatives and integrals, and why that’s important, which means I know something about the natural world that I wouldn’t know otherwise.
Similarly, from my anthropology classes as an undergrad I learned that we need to be very, very skeptical of common-sense claims about the links between culture and other social features (such as language or nationality)—so I learned to question common sense, which is a pretty useful skill. (Got that from all the statistics I’ve forgotten, too.)
From my literature classes I learned how to read a text closely—it’s not a skill I use very often, but when I need to it’s incredibly useful. Certainly wouldn’t be able to write a solid academic paper about that close reading, but it’s helped immensely in my ability to enjoy both difficult and simple pieces of literature I’ve read for fun.
And so on.
Basically, you’re thinking of education the wrong way. Education isn’t primarily about teaching you facts, it’s about teaching you to think. Yes, facts (and methods of analysis) are the means by which that’s done, but the harder-to-test skills like information literacy and critical thinking, that’s where the lasting value of an education lies.
Funny, I remember all of my elementary s hook teachers, and most of my junior high teachers, and most of my college teachers…but I honestly don’t remember my high school teachers…at all.
I do remember my college content info. Much of it is relevant to my field, and when I work, I use that info…along with current practices.
I still remember how to tap a keg and…do other things.
In calculus, I learned a song for solving max-min equations. I still remember the song. When my son was taking calc, I taught him the song. He looked at me like I was nuts. Then he laughed and said it works.
The way they teach math now is so confusing, I don’t understand why they need to change it every few years.
I needed to take a placement test for a soils course that required a level of math I had not practiced for years.
I was encouraged to take the test then & there without any prep.
:((
I passed & I got an A in the soils course, which was one of the hardest classes, I’d ever had.
I expect they know more than they think they do.
@scout59, same here! 
I loathed crystallography in college and have not touched any of its theory since mid-eighties. It all came back to me when I recently needed it - it just took a bit of time to read up on it. Repetition is the mother of learning, as someone said. Human brain is an amazing thing…
OP, maybe your dad just does not know how to explain stuff well. Not every expert in their field is a good teacher.
I can still recite (in Middle English) the first few lines of “The Canterbury Tales.” I can remember some specific things professors said in some memorable lectures.
But when I pulled out an old college transcript, I was surprised to see that I had taken an accounting course. Oh, yeah…
“Debits on the left, Credits on the right”. The only thing I remember from my Accounting 1 class, LOL!
To sell more textbooks
I doubt very much that any engineer – even one who has gone into management – has “forgotten” high school trigonometry. It is pretty basic stuff. It sounds like your dad doesn’t want to do your homework for you.